Thank you Hugh

The above art originated from the following post.
Original art work by Hugh Macleod. Art work released by Hugh under the Creative Common License.

You read the darnest thing on blogs these days

This is an excerpt from the blog of Guy Kawasaki (a very original blog btw).

The first step is to recognize who is an asshole. Sutton’s blog cites one method. It’s called the Starbucks Test It goes like this: If you hear someone at Starbucks order a “decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,” you’re in the presence of an asshole. It’s unlikely that this petty combination is necessarythe person ordering is trying to flex her power because she’s an asshole.

Dang, I love that test. I know it makes me sound like an anti-starbucks elitist. But whatever, these days everybody has an opinion, everybody publishes their opinion and anybody with an opinion is an elitist of some sort.

In other words :) Go read the post here. Thanks Mr Kawasaki.

Business plans need compassion too

I like the idea behind greendimes. They work (constantly they claim) on taking you out of the junk mail life cycle. In addition they plant a tree, for every month you continue to be their customer. Will this make you carbon nuetral, heh I don't think so :) but it does seem like an interesting business model.

Is this a eco-friendly marketing plan?

What if

All the shoe companies decide to fight Zappos at their own game. Why not have retail shoe outlets whose only purpose is to help you (the customer) find your size and check out the look in front of those fabulous full length mirrors. Have you located your shoe of choice? Great here is what you do now.

Next to every shoe rack is a kiosk/browsing station that lets you order the shoe from their online warehouse and at prices that are cheaper or competitive with Zappos. So why not? Yes you do lose customers who desire to walk out of the store with the smell of new leather or suede or whatever composite nasa inspired material in their bag. But do they really want that over the savings they would get if you dropped the rates and deliver the shoes in a couple days.
Can you crunch the numbers and see if the increase in sales (assuming there is an increase in sales) would justify free shipping or two day shipping, etc? Strike a partnership with UPS (almost everybody does these days)
You have increased floor space, more creative ways to use your store so it becomes less of a shoe store and more of a "shoe bar". Give your users an experience.... and let them place their orders whenever they want.

So why not? What do the shoe stores have to lose by trying it out?

Disclaimer: My favourites are Kenneth Cole and Cole Haan. I tried a bunch of others but these fit me the best and I love their style.

Image link from shoeblogs.com (if I am violating any copyright please let me know and I will remove the image).

We saw "Chalk" last night and it was good!

Go see it.
It is a very funny movie that has 5 real actors in its entire cast. I know because I was at the QandA last night after the movie. The rest are either people with little acting experience or not actors. It has real teachers, real students and employs heavy improvisation. All in all well done. It is humorous but also a revealing documentary on the state of our public school educational system and its effects on the lives of all involved.

Other related bits,

• Movie details here. This movie website is hosted by Bside which was started by Chris Hyams and also employs a bunch of other smart and cool folks I used to work with. They are doing really good work with their product. Check it out here :).
  
• The movie was directed by Mike Akel and I found that one of my friends (Rod Henegar) edited the first movie Mike made. Mike is also close friends with some other friends of mine. Basically Austin is kind of small and you eventually find connections with people :)
• I am currently with a startup and our goal is to help us (the USA) move away from the school we saw in the movie. One school at a time of course ;-). Nothing like a big goal eh. We are just starting.....
  

What if the world was reduced to 100 people

Thanks to presentation zen for the link.

Is this an example of a vertical search engine

I am not sure what is going on here. I am talking about the Ms Dewey search engine. Umm.. maybe they should let the user choose the "librarian" and include a Mr Smith to give Ms Dewey company so both men and women can use this search engine.

Is being different all that matters

I checked out the Chipotle website today. It was the topic du jour on wallstrip today. It was an interesting browsing experience. The website is dense but clean and almost sparse. It involves the users in unique ways. I think the live feed of guac being prepared or chicken marinating is very cool :-). I love the amount of interior and exterior design examples on the website. For a Chipotle groupie, I am sure there is plenty to devour on this website.

But is it trying to be too cutting edge and sacrificing some simple usability in the process? Why is there no search feature (esp. given the density of the website). Why is there no site map. I understand that the whole website was built in flash but still... I was curious about who built this website and there was nothing available. I was curious about latest stock performance related news and again bupkis.

To:
Whoever is in charge of these things over at Chipotle,

The website is very cool and unique but make sure it is usable also :).

cheers,
me

There are times when Hugh says it best

This is one of those times. Thanks Hugh :)

(image belongs to Hugh and gapingvoid as the (c) clearly states).

I am happier than a wooden spoon at a spelling bee

Apparently we say stuff like where I live :). Props to Scott Adams for today's Dilbert.

Grilled Chicken causes cancer

A US doctors' group has sued seven leading fast-food chains including McDonald's and Burger King over their use of a "dangerous carcinogenic" in grilled chicken.
Aside from McDonald's and Burger King, the chains named in the lawsuit were Chick-fil-A, Chili's, Applebee's, Outback Steakhouse and TGI Friday's.

I love the lack of information apart from the sensational headlines. I am sure the "US doctor's" group sued the fast food chain. Looks like doctors realized that it is easier to file class action law suits to make money rather than pay insanely high insurance and practice the craft of curing people of ailments.

Don't you love good informative educative journalism. Link to the article here (thanks to my brother for the link).

Missing the forest for the trees

O'Reilly released a history of programming languages poster that is worth a glance. Jeff Atwood has some interesting ruminations based on this poster. Fun read, recommended.

How to deal with body insecurity the HP way

This is a really stupid move by HP IMHO. More information available at this Signal Vs Noise blog post.

Surprise bonuses

I am a subscriber to Fred Wilson's blog. He is a managing partner in two vc firms in NYC.

I live in Austin and we had ACL festival last weekend. Pretty big deal around this part of the country and for lots of serious music lovers. I did not attend it (apart from a sufjan stevens concert). But last night I scored cool points from the "hip young indie music generation" kind of girl who works at the nearby coffee shop. I asked her about the "nosebleed incident" and she gave me the "you are not all old and out of it" look. So did my wife Kim for that matter. ;-)

How did I know about this? Because Fred posted about this with pictures on his blog (which i started reading because I enjoy educating myself on technology and incubation) here and here. I think it is neat how I know more about my backyard because of a blog written from NYC resident. Good stuff indeed!


Have a fun story to share?

Is there space for you to innovate?

turkey-news
Originally uploaded by a.ma.r.

This screen shot seems to say yes. On the left is an ad (courtesy google of course) that to me seems to make no sense given my context as I am reading this page.
Islamic leaders in Turkey are pissed about the Pope's take on jihad and I am offered free dental cleaning in Turkey!?! Go figure....

Keyword matching is not context sensitive advertising. The former is a shotgun approach to the latters rifle approach. I think context sensitive advertising's growth will depend on the innovations we make in the area of semantic web. Till then, rejoice and try to do better than this ;-)

synchronicity

I just read this quote

Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough

on Chris Yeh's blog (which I came into contact with via the entrepreneur meta blog: My Way).
That is a powerful quote and exactly what I needed to hear today. I love quotes like these which help put things in perspective.

Now regarding the synchronicity part. The above quote is from the book "Status Anxiety" by Alain De Botton who is also famous for "The Consolations of philosophy" and "How Proust can change your life". Interestingly Steve Corell plays a washed out Proust scholar in the movie "Little Miss Sunshine", which I thoroughly enjoyed watching this weekend. Highly recommend the movie. I am getting the book as soon as I finish this post.

This is just Texas we are talking about....

Recap from this weekend,

• UT football team lost to OSU.
• Austin resident Andy Roddick lost to Federer in the US Open finals.
• Dallas Cowboys lost to Jacksonville Jaguars.
• Houston Texans lost to Philadelphia Eagles.
• Houston Astros lose to Brewers.
• Dallas Rangers beat Orioles.

and this is just Austin or Texas related news. Now who was telling me we are not a sports obsessed country.....

It is everyman's story but it still is an incredible story

I am newly married and I am still getting used to this awesome change in my life. I was recently trying to get a feel for how long before I get used to it and then I realised that maybe I got it backwards. The question I need to answer is how can I try to keep it fresh so I never get used to it.

What I am experiencing is not a single, dominating, easily describable change. It is the collection of thousands of little changes, each of which are capable of making me gasp a little with awe. So on those rare occassions when the cumulative effect hits me, the gasp is audible and I am left breathless. Like for instance the thought of sharing a bed every night with the woman I love is a totally incredible feeling. Something I have never experienced before. It has been two weeks butI continue to be amazed at my good fortune. I try to fight that grin of my face when I get up but I cannot and I even dare think that it looks a little smug.

I know that I will get used to this. I know that we will go down the well traversed path of marriage and family like millions of others. I wish there was some way to store and record this memory that is more visceral than the written word. I wish there is some way I can remind myself later how I feel now.

I am not trying to discount the future and I am pretty sure the future is going to bring its own share of experiences. I am just saying that 'now' is pretty incredible and I wish I could record-rewind-play 'now' as often as I want whenever I want to.

Is this what self sustaining means

Kiko one of the Web2.0 calendar start ups called it quits recently. Interestingly, they liquidated their assests on eBay; in essence they sold the company on eBay. I guess you could call it staying true to their zeitgeist. They still made real american money on eBay so I assume it all connects with the real world somewhere eventually.

Meet my friend the interaction designer

This is kind of like interlacing your fingers and stretching your hands palm facing outwards so that your fingers do the popping thing.

I just returned from my honeymoon this past weekend (thank you, the wedding was beautiful indeed). Aspen is gorgeous in the summer! I thoroughly enjoyed not having a laptop, having my phone turned off for most of the week and getting my daily news fix courtesy USA Today and the WSJ. It was fantastic! But that was then and this is now. I really don't feel like I have much worth blogging about but I do want to start posting again just to get back in the habit I guess.

So I give you Kevin Cheng. Kevin and I worked together for a few years at Trilogy. I lost contact with him when he moved to UK to pursue a graduate degree in Usability and IxD (apparently that is how you say Interaction Design). I have not done a good job of keeping up with him at least not to the extent I would like to.
I have been following his life from afar and have learnt a lot about interaction design from his blogs and such. It is actually a really fun and curious area of research and impact each of us directly. Have you wondered why Yahoo maps looks the way it does or why the dashboard in your car has the cup holder in that particular spot. It is not random (or it shouldn't be), there are people like Kevin who spend time and energy solving these questions :-). So get to know Kevin,

Kevin's blog.
Kevin and Tom's web comic.
Interview with Kevin that gives a little introduction to usability